


i got to admit it's getting better (better)

by softlyblue



Series: it can't get no worse [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (crystal-related issues), Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angst, Frumpkin is an Emotional Support Animal (Critical Role), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29274864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue
Summary: "Oh!" the social worker says, brittle and bright, her voice reedy in the wide room they've given her as an office, "I like your socks, Caleb!"He blinks at her and then down at his socks. "I like cats," he manages, after twenty-four seconds staring at the little cotton kittens dancing around his ankles. He sees her type:expressed interest in cats. only occasion of verbalisation during meeting. some interaction.
Relationships: Frumpkin & Caleb Widogast, The Mighty Nein & Caleb Widogast
Series: it can't get no worse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2151222
Comments: 60
Kudos: 239





	i got to admit it's getting better (better)

**Author's Note:**

> hello cr !! this is my first (hopefully not last) fic in the fandom, and i had planned for something a lot less niche than this, but i love cats and i've just watched up to the episode where caleb debuts his tower and my heart is full of cats and caleb and frumpkin. 
> 
> more detailed tw explanation: there is no actual self-harm in this fic, but a reference to a dissociative episode and actions taken in that. to skip over just that section, skip from "loaf of sourdough" to "he really does love cats". however, there are repeated references to the crystals and everything that implies, so if that's an issue for you please keep it in mind!
> 
> edit 9/2/21: some small changes to set this up for future works!

To her credit, after the first five minutes or so Cara stops trying to probe him into conversation, and instead starts a running commentary on what she's doing on her computer, as though Caleb can't see the reflection of her screen on the window behind her. Maybe most of her patients aren’t dedicated enough to try, but Caleb _is,_ and paranoid enough for it to be worth his while, too. The meeting only has to be an hour long before Beauregard is coming back to get him, and already seventeen minutes have passed without anything of note happening to him.

There’s still time.

He sees her type _Caleb_ beside a little column in bold called **preferred name/form of address,** but that doesn't help too much when he can read the line above that - **legal name/form of address: Bren Ermendrud.** That's okay. If she calls for Bren, he just won't answer, and that's all fine. Bren's not here right now. Probably won’t be ever again. 

Twenty-three minutes in, and Cara is on Facebook, looking at pictures of a party with lots of similarly-aged women smiling, wearing paper hats and glasses and laugh lines around their eyes. "I'm just emailing your other caseworker," she murmurs, when the silence spins a little too long and Caleb starts hearing the ticking clock like a bomb in his right ear, "Don't worry. When did you say your friend was coming back?"

Caleb shrugs. Beauregard told him he didn't have to talk if he didn't want to, and he doesn't want to.

Beauregard tells him things like that. 

Forty-eight minutes in and his neck really hurts from holding it in this position for forty-eight minutes. Caleb hasn't moved much, apart from a shrug, a nod at his name, a blink, since he came and sat down and Beau kissed him on the top of his head and hit him with her kitbag as she turned around and then laughed and apologised and laughed some more, the usual swirling dervish of activity and excitement she is. He's sore, but not in the ways he's accustomed to, so he guesses it doesn't matter all that much. It's still a step up. Anything is a step up.

"Oh!" Cara says, brittle and bright, her voice reedy in the wide room they've given her as an office, "I like your socks, Caleb!"

He blinks at her and then down at his socks. Caduceus and Veth had taken him to the shops after Jester's first failed and disastrous attempt, and neither of them had tried to make him choose for himself, and so he ended up with lots of warm pink t-shirts and brown corduroy trousers, jumpers with that ugly knit pattern sailors wear on TV, a long scarf that smells of plastic wrap and perfume, a few hair bobbles almost the same colour as his hair.

They were marching up to the tills, Caduceus laden with stuff, Veth holding Caleb's hand and talking about how much she hates wearing jeans, when he saw the racks of novelty socks placed right by the queue, just in the right place to catch tired shoppers unawares. Black with little kitten faces on them, the whiskers long and pixelated, comic-book-style _MEOW!_ written on the heels. He took them and set them on the pile in Caduceus's arms, and none of them said a word but he could feel how proud Veth was of him and it made him want to throw up.

"I like cats," he manages, after twenty-four seconds staring at his socks emerging from his shoes, the place where the elastic top has pressed a strip of red into his pale, sun-starved skin. Iron deficiency, Caduceus says. He attends most of Caleb's physical doctor's appointments now, just in case, and he’s started Caleb on a variety of interesting multivitamins and tablets which have to be taken after meals and which hurt to swallow. Caleb does it anyway, because he knows it makes Caduceus happy.

He sees Cara type.

**Any Other Comments: expressed interest in cats. only occasion of verbalisation during meeting. some interaction. openly verbalised with Ms Lionett at beginning and end. possible follow-up - REMINDME!1WEEK.**

It's Yasha's turn to cook. Veth isn't around this evening - she spends most nights at her own house, and only comes around when Caleb's in a particularly bad way - and both Fjord and Jester are out right now, on one of their walks, shopping trips, coffee runs that _are_ dates even if neither of them admit to it. Caleb thinks. Caleb assumes.

"You did great," Beau punches Caleb's shoulder, beside him mixing the squash concentrate into juice in a jug. She smells a little, not in a bad way, but in a familiar way; she smells of sweat and exhaustion, and completion. "Last week next week, huh?"

"She has to - has to sign off on it," Caleb mumbles, perched on the chair like an owl. He feels ragged. He _hates_ the weekly checkups, the trips to the miserable recovery office, the waiting in the room with whichever friend is passing that particular day, the sitting in painful silence while Cara tries to talk to him about how he's developing. How he’s _developing._ Badly, usually, although if he doesn’t tell her that she can’t write it down.

Yasha's cooking pasta. The smell of garlic and tomatoes rises through the apartment. (This is Yasha and Beau's place. Caleb is sleeping in Caduceus's spare room right now, but sometimes he's on the sofa here, and sometimes in Veth's - Cara doesn't know about that. She _had_ at the start, but she'd said something about instability and reassurance, and his friends had promised Caleb felt stable.)

(She knew not to ask him.)

"Do you think she won't?" Yasha hands Caduceus bowls, and, humming airily, he lays them around the table. It's only the four of them.

"I don't... know," Caleb forces himself to pick up the fork at his side, staring at the light glinting off the tines. "I don't... I really don't."

"She will," Beau says, with enough assurance for all four of them. "She totally will."

It's been two months since Caleb left Dr Ikithon and reconnected with his childhood friend, Veth Brenatto. In the time he'd spent away, she'd married and had a _child,_ and grown friends like a garden, and it's only Veth's word that has Caleb trusting them as implicitly as he has.

He lies in the bed in Caduceus's spare room, listening to the big firbolg snores from the next room over. The door is locked, the key tied around his wrist, and in addition to that the two deadbolts at the top and bottom of the door are shut; Fjord installed them, screws hanging out of his mouth beside his tusks and a look of intense focus on his face, a few days after Caleb had confessed to him how frightened he was at night, despite everything. Despite Caduceus.

None of them have said anything. He's spoken the most to Veth and Caduceus about what Dr Ikithon really _did,_ and Beauregard knows something about it with her work in the Soul, and Caleb thinks the others must have a pretty clear idea of what happened. He doesn't tell them much.

But he knows he's one of the only of Ikithon's charges to be out of institutional care. He thinks, although nobody will tell him, that Astrid might be dead. All anyone will tell him about where Dr Ikithon is is that he won’t ever be able to hurt Caleb, ever again.

"We can cater for his needs," Veth had argued, holding his hand, Caleb still mostly unresponsive, still in hospital with thick bandages around his forearms, his head tilted unnaturally so he can't catch any sight of the IV needle stuck into his arm. Once a day the cleric for the ward comes in and heals him, but he was so weak that the magic did more harm than good towards the start, and the sound of spellcasting made him nervous. "One of my friends is a licensed therapist. He's already offered his spare room."

"You understand he can't be simply released," the social worker had said. She was nice enough. Caleb can't remember her name, but it wasn't Cara. He had lots of social workers, right at the beginning. "At minimum, he'll need a house inspection - this therapist, he'll need to be interviewed - and for the next ten weeks _at minimum_ we'll require mental wellness appointments at the recovery clinic. The conditions, the publicity of the case - I'm sure you understand."

Veth had squeezed his hand. "When he wakes up, I'll ask him."

She did. Caleb agreed. He agreed to anything, back then.

Fjord drives him to his last appointment, and sits in the waiting room for him. "I'll be back at five-to," he says, his accent squeezed just a little through his tusks, his warm hand in Caleb's, "I've got stuff to hand in to Stephen and then I have to check some other shit up at the school. Call me if you need me?"

"Yeah," Caleb whispers hoarsely, "Yeah, I - I will."

"Hey, look at this." Until Caleb's name is called, he and Fjord watch kitten videos on his phone, some guy from Eastern Europe leaving a bowl of milk outside his door every night until they emerge blurry and low-quality and grey, squalling for attention. "Jester sent it to me," Fjord whispers, "It's _so_ cute. Wanna see what they look like now?"

A new video. Fjord hands him the phone; Caleb's vision is a little worse than his, now, but they haven't gotten round to researching a good optometrist that won't freak him out. He freaks out at everything, these days - crowds, small spaces, big spaces, attention, day, night, spellcasting on his _really_ bad days. The smell of fire.

"It's cute," Caleb says, and Fjord beams at him. "Right?"

"Caleb," Cara says, at the door of her office, her pen behind her ear. She smiles softly, and then her eyes drift to Fjord. "Um... and it’s Fjord Stone, right?"

"Yeah," Fjord clears his throat, shifting a little the way he does when unexpectedly addressed, "Yeah, that's me. Are we all good here if I come back?"

"This won't take the full hour, actually. If you haven't got anything to do, would you mind staying?"

Caleb squeezes Fjord's hand. Change makes him anxious. _Unexpected_ change. Everything makes him anxious.

"Yeah, sure," Fjord says after a beat, "So long as you're cool with going to the university after."

Caleb shrugs, then nods. He’ll just wait in the car.

"Lovely," Cara says, and beckons, "Come in, then! I have someone for you to meet, Caleb. You too, actually, Fjord. Are we all ready?"

And inside the room, sitting in the middle of the carpeted floor, is a spellcaster with a summoning circle drawn on the carpet. It makes Caleb's throat close up in sudden fear, and his hand clasps tight to Fjord's and he presses tighter into his friend's side, even though the spellcaster is a tiny little halfling in a pink jumper and those block-colour necklaces that look like misplaced children's toys. She's about as far from Dr Ikithon as she could manage, and that’s probably why they got her here. She looks up when they come into the room, and smiles, her nut-brown hands covered in chalk. "Hello! It won't be too much longer..."

"I've signed off against these meetings, Caleb," Cara says, picking a sheaf of papers up from her desk, "With the provision that you accept at least a trial period with a support fey."

"A support fey," Fjord echoes suspiciously, "What exactly does that mean?"

"Alanna is summoning him now, actually. A support fey is - well, you've probably seen them on TV, although they aren't all seeing-eye creatures and the like. I believe, Caleb, you'll recover better without institutional frames. Am I right?" Cara hands him the last page to sign, and a pen, and a smile.

Caleb lifts one shoulder. He talks at home, of course he talks at home, but here - it all reminds him a little too much of Ikithon's. The smell. The coats. The medical equipment, tucked into cupboards but not entirely hidden. The sound of the street, muffled from a great distance.

"Recovery," Fjord echoes, his other hand shifting to rest on Caleb's mid-back, "I thought you just said he had?"

"Recovery is more than a sheet of paper and a signature, unfortunately. But with this fey, I believe... well, it'll be like a comfort. Or a support. I know Caleb has a wonderful system around him, so Veth and Beauregard have taken great pains to tell me, but - well. This is a very well-researched area of recovery and therapy, please believe me," Cara returns to sit at the edge of her desk, watching the spellcaster. "I'll just need a follow-up appointment in a month, say, when you've had time to get used to the idea. Then we'll see if you're a good fit."

"Well, here he is!" Alanna, the spellcaster, sits back on her boots, her freckled cheeks chalky as the light around the summoning circle dies. In its place is -

Caleb muffles his gasp, biting the side of his cheek, but it's already made him relax enough that Fjord moves back to just hold his hand. "Oh," he breathes, and bends, knees cracking, his arm outstretched, his shirtsleeve moving against the bandages still in place, "Oh, hello, there."

"The spell means he knows what to do, but the rest of it is up to you," Cara says, smiling. "Naming and such. Does this sound okay, Caleb? And a follow-up in a month?"

The cat is big and orange, almost amber, just a little bit of fey energy crackling green across his whiskers. His big eyes turn to Caleb immediately, as though he knows why he's been summoned, and he _mrows,_ and his paws in their little white socks pad over to him. He pushes his head into Caleb's stubbly chin.

"Okay," Caleb whispers, on the floor with a cat in his lap, Fjord standing protectively beside him, "Okay, _ja._ That sounds - that sounds fine."

Jester and the cat get on like a house on fire. "Oh, _Caleb,_ he is so big and fat and round and cute!" She exudes, springing for him, arms outstretched, catching both Caleb and the cat in a hug that he doesn't flinch away from only because Jester is always careful, in her expressive movements, in her wide arm-waves, to telegraph exactly where she's going. "I love him so much," she says into the side of his neck, "Oh, _Caleb!"_

"He is soft," Caleb says. The cat hadn't left his arms, all the way from the clinic back to Veth's house, up from the university, and Fjord hadn't said anything about it apart from cooing about how cute they looked. He'd looked happy, really. "He is singing, Jester, listen." Caleb holds the cat up to Jester's ear, and she stands on tip-toes, crooking her horns to hear the purring.

"Oh, _Caleb,"_ she sighs happily, and then smiles again. "I'm going to tell Fjord I love the cat!"

Caleb is left alone, then, in Veth's front hall with the cat and his reflection in the mirror. "I might not keep you," he tells it, in the language he's most comfortable, "You might not want to stay. Do you miss the Feywild, kitten?"

The cat stares at him with knowing eyes. Languages don't mean much to fey beings. He meows, and puts one front paw on Caleb's nose.

Caleb's eyes burn and he knows all at once that he doesn't want to keep the cat. He _can’t_ want to keep the cat.

"I hate him," Caleb says, "He - he won't move," and he pushes the cat, as though to express his point. Obediently, the little fey creature hops from his lap to Veth's floor, and curls up with his paws under his body, staring at Caleb the whole time. "He usually won't move," he says lamely, when Veth giggles.

She's sitting in her favourite armchair by the fire in the hearth, a mug of tea in her brown hands, a button bracelet around her left wrist. She's changed from the shy halfling Caleb knew in his youth, billowed into a headstrong mother, a loving wife, a determined woman with her own goals, an alchemical shop she runs with Yeza, a youth group she helms with Jester, and a club of girls she goes drinking with on Thursday nights. She is beautiful, and she shines. She's done far more with the years than Caleb has, but in all the time they've reconnected, she's never called him _Bren._ "I think he's cute, Caleb."

"He's tricked you," Caleb says sullenly, staring at the thing. He hates it. It's been three days and he hates it. "He's evil. Do you want to - to keep him tonight?"

 _"Keep_ him? I thought he was the clinic's?"

"He's a fey being. He's t-technically mine. It isn't like you can mis- can mistreat him, anyway." Caleb stares at the cat and imagines how quickly it would be dispelled. Discorporated. One good strike would do it, he thinks, and in his mind's eye (his mind's eye, brutally honest) he sees his own hand, flames crackling within it, cast at the cat. The sad noise it would make on its way back to the Feywild. Beauregard could punch it to discorporation. Hell, Veth could probably punch it to discorporation. It's so delicate.

"I don't want to mistreat him," Veth says, her voice closer now, and when her small hand comes to rest on his knee Caleb jumps. "Hey. You okay? You were away for a bit, there."

"I am fine," Caleb bites the words out of the air like they hurt to say. "I - I think I will go back to Caduceus, now. If you don't - mind."

"No, no," she's smiling at him in that anxious way she sometimes does, when she forgets to hide that she's fussing. "And you want me to... would it make you feel better if I kept the cat?"

"Yes," _No,_ "Yes, please," he says. The cat. It doesn't even have a name. How could Caleb hope to define something as warm and precious as that? He barely has enough flame to keep himself going. "I will see... you tomorrow. I will... get him then."

"Okay," Veth says, her voice barely audible over the rushing in his ears. "Are you good to walk on your own, Caleb?"

"Yes," _No,_ "Yes, I'll be - fine," he says. He lets her fuss with his scarf, with the gloves he's borrowing from Yeza, "Thank you. See you tomorrow."

Veth lives in a residential street beside the river, a long way from the centre of town, and an equally long way from the building Caduceus lives in. It's a block of flats near Beauregard and Yasha, and Caduceus lives there for the garden on the rooftop and the weekly food drives the whole building participates in as a collective. Caleb is one of their charity cases, he thinks, and that's why it was so easy to get him on the lease. When he reaches the river, his hands shaking as he clutches the railing, he realises he doesn't know where he is - he realises this episode is going to be a little worse than he thought it would be, and his body lists to the side before he grips harder to correct it. He can feel the crystals under his skin, burrowing, and if he focuses he can hear Ikithon telling him that this was all just an elaborate test of his loyalties. He failed. Caleb _failed._

He sways again, and then turns around, unaware of the few dog-walkers on the path at this time of day, and vomits into a bush.

And then the cat is there, clambering up the railing until it stands between his white-knuckled hands. It's bigger than Caleb remembers. Not by much, not by much, still a conceivably _cat-sized_ cat, but its fur has puffed out and turned a more vibrant shade of orange, and its green, knowing eyes are serious, looking deep into Caleb's. It blinks, and hits him on the chin with its own, and Caleb knows where he is again.

But he doesn't know how to get home. "Do you know who Caduceus is?" He asks the cat, knowing what the answer will be.

The cat leaps for his chest and, on instinct, Caleb forces his arms to close around it. Him. The weight is heavy and the body is warm and the little feline heart thrums against his skin in a constant, reassuring rhythm. "We are lost, little fey," Caleb says to him, "We are stuck by the river."

The cat makes a noise that might be a laugh, and points its little pink nose to Caleb's left, to where the road turns into the centre of the city a little further. It bats his chin with a socked paw.

"This way?"

It - he - meows.

And it brings him all the way home.

"Caleb, Veth says she's lost your - cat," Caduceus says, slowing when he opens the door to the cat purring smugly, Caleb looking a little embarrassed, "Oh. Whoops. I'll ring her back. Won't be a mo."

"You made me look foolish," Caleb murmurs into the cat's ear, and despite himself he hugs him, cuddles himself up into the warmth of his fur, rubs his cheek against his head, "You made me silly in front of my friends."

The cat just purrs.

"It's been a week, man, when are we gonna get a name?" Beauregard has taken Caleb out to lunch. Usually he's too uncomfortable to do something like that, something in public, even though it's been the two months - he still hates being looked at by too many people at the one time, and knowing that they're seeing him for what he looks like.

(Beauregard - short, stocky, clearly muscular even wearing her athletics hoodie, her hair braided down to the end of her neck, her shorn sides in need of a go-over, constantly grinning, her kitbag at her feet, at home in her own skin. Even if she didn't have her Cobalt Soul badge hanging from her belt, she'd be recognisable as someone with authority, someone you could go to with an issue and have it solved.)

(Caleb - taller, but not tall. Skinny. Underfed, even after the best efforts of both Caduceus and Yeza. He allowed Yasha to give him a trim a few weeks after he was released from the hospital, but his hair still hangs curly and long around his ears and over his eyes, his fringe growing out long ago. The scar on his chin, the stubble on his cheeks he hasn't the energy to shave, the darting eyes, the mismatched dress sense because most mornings the idea of _choosing_ what to wear is so overwhelming he can't even get out of bed. Twitchy.)

He and Beauregard look like exactly what they are. A monk of the Cobalt Soul and a charity case.

"A - name?"

"Yeah," she stuffs another loaded forkful of her fry-up into her mouth, all the food bunched into her cheeks, talking like a hamster, "For the cat, man! Before Jester gives him a name."

"I am not keep - keeping him," Caleb says firmly. The cat is sitting in his lap, weighing him down, and it's making him pleasantly heavy. When he's tried to go out for lunch previously with Beauregard (and it's an attempt that happens quite often) he feels light, tetherless, like if he's looked at too much more he'll float out of his seat and explode.

With the cat, he's been anchored in his chair.

Beau swallows. She frowns. _"Why_ aren't you keeping him? Fjord made it sound like your social whatever thought it was a permanent thing."

"Permanent if I - if I like it," Caleb corrects, one hand in the cat's fur, the other lining up sweetcorn and peas in alternating colours along his knife. He's had one bite to eat. Grilled chicken, mixed vegetables, peppercorn sauce.

(When they first tried him on solids, he vomited them right back up. They had to wean him back to flavour, slowly and painfully, and Veth rubbed his back while he retched into a hospital basin and tears mixed with the acidic taste in the back of his throat.)

The cat growls. Beauregard frowns harder. "You don't like him?"

"No," Caleb says. The lie sticks in his throat like thick, dry bread, and he tries to eat a pea. It pops in his mouth, the skin peeling off his teeth, and when he swallows he thinks for an awful second he's going to throw up. "No."

She points her fork at him, and Beau is the only person Caleb will allow to talk to him this way; the only person he knows will say this and love him anyway. He wishes he knew why. "Okay, so that's some bullshit. Is this a deep talk? Is this an emotions thing?"

"Not everything is a - an emotions thing, Beauregard," Caleb says dryly. The cat pushes his head into Caleb's wrist, jerking his fork towards his mouth, and out of habit he eats.

Beau scoffs. "Yeah, but with _you?_ I beg to fucking differ. Tell me the issue with the cat."

"No issue with the cat."

"Liar."

"No."

"Liar."

"I am not," Caleb says, and the cat pushes his hand again in its quest to - what, lick its own paw? - and he eats.

She sits back in her chair, obviously dissatisfied. "Do you want me to leave it, or is this one of those times I just keep shouting bullshit 'til you tell me what's up?"

"Leave it, Beauregard," he says softly, and risks some chicken without the sauce, "And the cat has not got a name. Try and tell - tell Jester not to name it, either, please."

"She won't if you ask her and you mean it, but Caleb-"

"I want to talk about something else," he says. He kicks her under the table, and he knows that move on its own is such a development from how he was last month - last week, even - that it'll prompt her to move on. "Tell me about your - ah, your classes. Please."

She does, but she's looking at him the whole time, and he wishes his hair was longer so he could hide behind it. The cat doesn't move from his lap the whole time, and every so often in the course of it washing itself, the tail or a paw or the top of the head will knock Caleb's wrist into taking another bite. When it does, Beau smiles at the cat, although Caleb can't imagine what she sees there.

The cat is wonderful. It smells of warmth and animals and fur, and it purrs against his thigh, and it holds him down when he thinks he might be about to float away, and as Beauregard is up at the till sorting out the bill, Caleb knows with even more certainty that it is far too good for him.

Beauregard walks him back to Jester's house, and punches him on the arm. "Take care of yourself," she says, in the doorway, "And, like, I love you. Or whatever. See you tonight? Deucey's?"

"Yeah," he says, his arms full of cat, hugging her with just his body, "I - I love you too, Beauregard."

_"Caleb!"_

"Hello, Caleb," Marion Lavorre says, a little more relaxed than her daughter. “It’s very good to see you.”

Jester lives with her mother, and perhaps that's why Caleb doesn't know her half as well as he'd like to - although Jester is wonderfully active in the community, with her youth group and her art classes and her community centre, she doesn't tend to spend any nights away from home, in case Marion worries. That's never the reason she cites, but it's the reason it _is._ Caleb promised Marion days ago he would bring the fey thing around for her inspection, and so here he is for tea and lemon cakes, while Jester tells him about her art classes at the community centre, and how she is _definitely_ the best there by _miles and miles,_ Caleb! Do you want to see my portfolio?

"And how have you been coping with him?" Marion asks, one delicate red finger tracing down the cat's head. It starts to purr, and it makes that face cats do, that thing that might be a smile if cats could smile, the mouth flat beside the nose, the eyes happily squeezed shut.

"He's-" Caleb means to be horrible, to lay the groundwork for the cat's return at the review meeting at the end of the month, but he can't bring himself to lie to Marion. None of them can. "He's been - he's very - he's very warm."

"I can see that," Marion says, and smiles softly, reservedly. Sometimes Caleb thinks he has a kindred spirit in her, when he sees her saying goodbye at the door, her hands clutching the doorhandle as though the sight of the wider world will trap her in it, and she'll never make it to safety again. "Yes, I can see that."

For some reason there's pressure behind his eyes. The cat curls his tail around Caleb's wrist and holds it, as though he knows, and that just makes it worse.

"And what have you named him, Caleb?"

"You _have_ to tell me before you tell anyone else," Jester says seriously, "I need Beau to know I'm cooler than her. And I need to sign off on it. Approve of it."

"I - I had a cat when I was younger," Caleb says. He doesn't mean to say it. He doesn't like lying to people that are mothers anymore. "Her name was Frumpkin."

"Frumpkin," Marion repeats, like she's trying the name out for size in her mouth, "Oh, and have you named him in her honor? Oh, that is so sweet. Caleb, what a lovely story."

"Yes," Caleb looks down at the cat in his lap, fat where his childhood pet was scrawny, amber and glowing where the other cat was tabby and balding, content and intelligent against the old twitchy anxiety. "I - I - yes. Frumpkin, I think. I only named him very recently."

"He suits you," Marion says. It sounds like a proclamation. "Do you want more tea?"

But most nights Caleb is at Caduceus's. That is his permanent address, written on the forms he filled out - had someone else fill out for him - at the hospital and at the centre he goes to for his wellness checks, and that is the address he has packages shipped to, or would have packages shipped to if he had packages to ship. _You need to be stable,_ they told him, when he expressed a desire to just sign himself out and leave, _You need to know there's a place you can call home._ Back then he hadn't even met Caduceus. It had just been Veth and Beauregard at the hospital, Veth because he knew her, Beauregard because she strong-armed her way into being his friend.

Caduceus is someone you can't help but trust. He is so big it should be frightening, but so gentle it immediately isn't, and one of his large furry paws encapsulates Caleb's whole shoulder, and he feels held.

Caduceus is a good person to live with. He doesn't mind the screaming, and he doesn't care about the deadbolts, and he's a light enough sleeper that if Caleb is up at four in the morning with his hands shaking too hard to brew the tea, he'll be there. He knows when to stay away and he knows when to come out and talk, nonsense usually, stuff about how to grow plants out of season and when snowdrops blossom and his favourite band right now. Sometimes he lets Caleb fall asleep on top of him, and he sits there all night, on the sofa with the TV on mute, and he never lets Caleb apologise.

"Frumpkin's a nice name," Caduceus says when Jester tells him, and he levels a _look_ at Caleb. It's soup tonight. Everyone's here. "Thank you for telling me, Jester."

Caleb turns red despite his best efforts. "I was going to - ach, going to tell you," he mutters, up to his elbows in soapy dishwater, Veth setting the table behind him, "I hadn't got around to it yet. Anyway. The - the damn cat is going when I next have the m-meeting. I don't - we don't - fit."

Frumpkin is lying across his shoulders, lighter than he is when he's a weight in Caleb's lap, fast asleep. He feels like nothing more than a warm, comforting scarf.

"Of course you don't," Caduceus rumbles, and tastes the soup. "Mm. Good. Do you want to taste?"

"At dinner," Caleb says. The idea of eating something right now makes his stomach lurch.

Caduceus is most of the reason he's been left to his own devices to the extent he has. Caleb thinks he'd still be in hospital, or maybe in one of the long-term recovery wards they talked about for a while, but Caduceus had accompanied Veth one day to a meeting Caleb was having with his social worker, and introduced himself in his low, rumbly voice and told the social worker (not Cara) that he was a therapist, and Veth's good friend, and if she didn't mind he'd like to get to know Caleb a little bit before any decision was made.

Caleb had been all too eager, at that point, to prolong the hanging stasis his life was in.

Jester is lying on the carpet under the table, whistling a merry tune, carving something into the leg of Caduceus's table. His brother made it for him, apparently, although Caleb has never met the rest of the Clay clan - Caduceus is close to them, and video calls happen almost every night, but Caleb has never accepted the invitation to join in. He doesn't want them to see him through the lens of siblinghood, and know that he's a charity case, a reject Caduceus is working on like a project after-hours.

"Thank you," Caduceus says, as he always does when Caleb does one of the chores he agreed to. The soapy water drips onto the floor; with a lightning-quick paw, Frumpkin reaches out and hooks a dishtowel on his paw, dropping it onto Caleb's hands. Caduceus smiles. "He's very intelligent."

Caleb looks away, his cheeks burning.

Fjord and Yasha are the last to show up for dinner. Fjord's classes run to six on a Wednesday, and then he has to walk the distance from his dorm to Caduceus's house; Yasha has started picking him up in her little scrappy car, which is only marginally faster than walking, because otherwise Fjord runs out of his weekly allotted petrol money. Fjord smells of cologne, Yasha smells of baking bread, and both of them are laughing at something; Yasha hands Caleb a warm parcel wrapped in brown paper when she’s through the door, which he discovers is a loaf of sourdough, just out of the oven.

Caleb gives it to Jester to cut. He tried using a bread knife once, shortly after his release, but it was just bad fortune that an episode swallowed him up around then, and he ended up trying to use it to cut into his arm and get the crystals out. Caduceus found him. He'd lost a lot of blood.

Frumpkin licks his ear with his sandpaper tongue and Caleb's heart swells so much he thinks it might burst.

He really does love cats.

"Hey, man," Beauregard slaps him on the shoulder that doesn't have a cat on it, "You guys look cute. Marion says he's called Frumpkin."

Frumpkin purrs so loudly at the mention of his name that Caleb can hardly deny it. "I... yes. Frumpkin. I had a pet cat when I was little."

"Aw, sick," Beau hugs him then, an awkward bump of her hip to his, "Was she as cute as Frumpkin is now? I _bet she wasn't, cutie?"_ The last in a cutesy-talking-to-pets voice Caleb can't imagine ever coming out of her mouth, as she wiggles her fingers in Frumpkin's face. "Hey, I'm not saying anything, I promise, but you seem way happier with him. _Plus_ you came to lunch and you ate, like, everything. Frumpkin, high-five!"

She holds her hand out and Frumpkin's socked paw hits her palm. Beau cheers.

Caleb wants to hug the cat so tightly it will learn to never leave - he wants to hug him with such care that the little fey creature on his shoulders will decide that, no matter what Caleb has done, he will stay.

When they sit down to eat Frumpkin moves to his lap. Every time Caleb's hand lapses, stops moving against the bowl, Frumpkin headbutts his wrist, and he finishes his soup second-to-last after Jester, who is talking too rapidly to eat. (Usually they sit and wait for him, but it could be ten minutes, twenty until Caleb gives up with half his meal still resting on the plate. He isn't good at that sort of thing.)

(Frumpkin is.)

"I love you," Jester tells Frumpkin seriously, when the night has wound to a close and everyone is leaving, "I love you so much!" She hugs him the way Caleb wishes he could, bundling the animal up into her arms and squeezing, and Frumpkin is a fey and he can't be hurt by things like too much love all at once. "Be good to Caleb!"

When everyone says goodnight, they say it separately to Caleb and his cat.

Not his cat. _The_ cat.

Frumpkin purrs, and then leaps right back up into his arms, heavy as always. Caduceus smiles at him. "I'm going to work for a bit," he says, his paw on Caleb's forearm, "Call me if you want anything. I think he's very good for you."

Caleb, exhausted, goes to bed.

When Caleb sleeps, often he doesn't dream, and for that quirk of his mind he is eternally and intensely grateful. He's always had a better memory than most but it was Dr Ikithon who really pushed him to use it to his advantage, who would try little tests to see how much Caleb could recall, who would do it in the night - _wake up, Bren, now tell me the name of the girl we saw last week -_ who would do it when Caleb was at peace - _Bren, what's the number written on the inside of my locker? -_ who would do it when Caleb was distracted, otherwise engaged. _Bren - stop screaming, idiot boy - Bren, tell me, what colour were the eyes of the boy I had in my office yesterday?_

So no. Caleb does not dream very often.

But when he does his memory is merciless, and his imagination runs deep and vast, but the worst part is it often doesn't have to do very much to make Caleb wake sobbing.

He is in Ikithon's office. Ikithon liked to have Caleb, Astrid, and Eadwulf sleep on the second floor near his experimentation lab, the room warded against explosions of both fire and psychic energy depending on which of his wards he wanted to work with that night. Ikithon was having them work on his own experiments, on his lifelong thesis about the crystals, but sometimes they would do it wrong.

(Sometimes Ikithon would be gone on work trips all week. He lectured in the university outside the city - not Fjord's university, thank the gods - and the commute was often too long for him to manage. Sometimes they'd be left alone for five days at a time, and they were good days.)

In the dream, Ikithon's eyes are slitted and serpentine, and his beard is ashy with the explosion Caleb didn't mean to cause, and his hands are burnt. "Bren," he says, "Tell me why you're doing so badly. What do I need to do to make sure you work as hard as the others?"

Caleb is still wearing his pyjamas in the dream, cotton bottoms with hedgehogs on them, warm thermal socks, and a shirt Fjord gave him that's too big and smells of his orcish friend, and has the university logo and Fjord’s name written across the chest in embroidery. "I'm sorry," he says, and when he looks at his hands they're shaking, "Oh, my gods-"

The crystals are moving under his skin. Now Ikithon is in the experimentation lab, and Caleb is with him and Astrid is lying still and unmoving on the floor. There's an ugly bruise on her temple. Ikithon grabs his arm and presses his thumb into one of the larger shifting crystals. "Show me what you can do, Bren," he commands, and as the pain surges through him from the crystals Bren starts to scream.

_"-leb? Caleb? Caleb?"_

He falls out of bed and, without checking to see where he is or what he's doing, vomits. His arms itch terribly and he scrapes the nails of one hand down the other forearm, trying to get the crystals out before they burrow too deep - Ikithon showed them a video clip of a previous student of his, and the way his corpse twitched with magical, unnatural rigor mortis because of the damn crystals surging energy through him. Caleb is sick again. There's the sound of a cat howling. Caduceus doesn’t even put the news on, in case Caleb hears his name. 

"Caleb, you're safe," says the voice attached to the big, heavy paw rubbing circles on his back, "Caleb? Your name is Caleb, yeah? You're with Caduceus right now. It's, uh, four forty-nine in the morning right now, it's a Thursday, you're in your bedroom."

"Cad...uceus," Caleb manages, and then with one final retch of stomach acid and air, he goes limp, and lets the big firbolg take the most of his weight, "How did you... get... in?"

"Frumpkin," Caduceus picks Caleb up, and he's very gentle, and he peels Caleb's fingers out of long open cuts on his arms, and he steps around the puddle of vomit as though it isn't there, "I think he opened the deadbolts. He woke me up. He sat on my chest. Didn't stop screaming until I came to check on you. Very kind of him."

Now they're in the bathroom. Caleb doesn't know how they got there, but Frumpkin is with him, sitting on his chest while Caduceus pats blood off his bare arms. Fjord's shirt is ruined.

Tears prick the corners of Caleb's eyes. _Fjord's shirt is ruined,_ and it had comforted him at night; Fjord is awkwardly sincere with his physical affection, and hugs from him make Caleb feel terribly safe. Ikithon got through it, though. He always does. He always will, no matter how far Caleb runs away from him.

"Tell me if you feel sick again, Caleb," Caduceus says. He presses his paw to Caleb's forehead, "do you want me to call someone? Beauregard?"

"It - it is five in the morning," Caleb says. “They will be… she will be asleep.”

"I know. Do you want me to call her?"

"I - I-"

Frumpkin clambers from Caleb's chest onto Caduceus, and begins meowing, paddling the fur and cloth of firbolg and pyjama insistently.

"Frumpkin wants me to get Beau for you," Caduceus says, "Is that what you want?"

Caleb closes his eyes, exhausted, the wriggling crystals under his skin building a scream in his throat; the feeling of Ikithon's hands on him is something no amount of water and time will ever be rid of. He doesn't have the energy to pick whether he sees Beauregard or Caduceus or no-one at all. He doesn't want to choose. He wants to lie in this bathtub until his body runs out of ways to keep him alive, and then Caduceus can put him in the compost heap with the onion skins and he can be part of the stew, maybe, and useful.

Frumpkin yowls.

"I'm ringing Beau," Caduceus says, and leaves Caleb in the bath with the cat.

"I hate you," Caleb says in the ringing silence, Frumpkin sitting on his chest and staring at him, "I - I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I _hate you-"_ and now Caduceus isn't here to be sad at him, and his thumbnail would be so quick, just burying it under the skin and opening up the unhealed flesh and popping the crystal out. Ikithon would be so disappointed. Ikithon would hate him. Ikithon would make Caleb put them back into himself - yes, he would, as Caleb got more able to perform the experiments on his own, he was expected to be both observer and subject, both scientist and project, and the knives on the desk were kept sharp for such purpose-

Soft fur meets him, instead of the hot blood inside his body. Frumpkin is there in between his seeking hand and his skin, fey-green eyes looking at him, silent all the while. "Move," Caleb says, his throat thick with tears and more retching acid he's keeping down, "Move, you stupid cat."

It doesn't.

Beau gets there a little after half past. She wakes up at five, she will tell Caleb later when he's in his right mind again, it's expected by the Soul, and Caduceus's house is on the route she usually takes for her morning run. But when she gets there Caleb is out of it, trapped in his own body looking out, his eyes unresponsive, the only thing he has control over - nebulous control over - the pattern of his own breaths.

Beau kneels in front of the bathtub, smelling of sweat and pastry and Yasha, a little. Her eyes are bright and her cheeks are wet. "Thanks for taking care of him, buddy," she says, and her dark hand reaches out to pet Frumpkin, "You're the best."

"Caduceus told me you had a shitty night the other day," Veth says. They're in Caduceus's flat, although Caduceus is at work right now, and it's just Caleb and a cup of tea for each of them and _Don't Tell the Bride_ on mute on the TV. "He said Frumpkin woke him up."

Caleb is curled up on the smaller armchair, although all the furniture is firbolg-sized, so he's still swallowed by the old, sagging cushions. He shrugs, Frumpkin sleeping in his lap. "I had a - nightmare, I suppose. I didn't know what was going on, but the - the cat, it woke him up."

(He emerged at six-fourteen that evening. Beauregard was beside him, drinking a cup of coffee and reading, and she very carefully hadn't exploded on him, as though a friend being catatonic and smelling of sour vomit in a bathtub for twelve hours was normal. _Love you, buddy,_ she said. She kissed him.)

"Sounds like Frumpkin's pretty helpful," Veth says, that careful way she does when she's making a statement but she's asking a question, "I thought you didn't like him."

"I don't."

Frumpkin stops purring, and his paws start batting at the front of Caleb's shirt. Caleb loves him, and the smell of warm fur and cat and homeliness, and the way Frumpkin will run after a ball of unravelling wool for hours and hours, and then will pick up the end in his sandpaper mouth and bring it back to Caleb and have just as much fun watching the string re-wrap itself around Caleb's long, knobbly fingers. He meows.

"Frumpkin seems to like you just fine, though," Veth takes a sip of her tea, "Caleb, I-"

"He is fine," Caleb interrupts, skin crawling. He doesn't want to talk about this. "But I think he is - not - not what I am - I don't need him. I don't need an... emotional... support fey." He hates even _saying_ it. "He is fine. Someone else can have him."

Veth looks at him over the edge of her cup. "Is that what this is about?"

"What?" Caleb buries both his hands in the depths of Frumpkin's fur and it grounds him, and he feels less as though he might float away. "I don't... what do you mean?"

"This is about deserving," Veth enunciates clearly, "This isn't about the damn cat at all."

"No-"

_"Caleb."_

"No," Caleb says, but he can hear himself how sulky and childish he sounds, "This is - not what this is. Veth-"

"Caleb," Veth sets her cup down and comes over to him, half the size of any human woman and twice as loving, and she climbs up into the firbolg chair and squeezes her hips beside his, and only she could be this close to him without his skin crawling and the crystals that aren't there any more worming to get loose, "Caleb, you love Frumpkin. I _know_ you do."

He doesn't look at her. He buries his face in the cat's fur, instead. "I have had him for less than a month," he says indistinctly, "That's no time to love something."

"You would have - Caleb, you would have been really hurt if Frumpkin didn't wake up Caduceus," Veth says, her tiny hand on his thigh, "If your door had been locked, if Deucey couldn't have got in, you-"

"I know," Caleb says.

"-And Beau said-"

"I _know,"_ Caleb says.

"-And even Marion remarked-"

"I know," Caleb says.

"-And you know what Caduceus says about therapy animals, and the Feywild, and recovery-"

"I _know,"_ Caleb says, a little desperate. Frumpkin rubs his head against Caleb's chin, seeking the friction of stubble against fur, "Veth, I - I -"

"Deserve the fucking cat," Veth tickles Frumpkin under his chin. "Say it, idiot. Say you deserve the fucking cat."

"What if I can't do anything ever again without him," Caleb whispers into Caduceus's room, into Veth's company, which smells of forgiveness and purity, something unmarred by crystals and the smell of burning skin, "I can't even eat without him, Veth. What if I - what if he -"

"Caduceus says fey companions can be bound to a mortal. I asked him about it. Yesterday, you know? Or the day before. He said that's what they do for recovery animals. Caleb," Veth hugs him, awkwardly, and Caleb is warm all over, "It's not like you reach a certain point of, like, whatever, distance from the event, and they say you can't have Frumpkin anymore. I don't think that's how it works. I think if you say you want him, you have him."

"I don't need him, though," Caleb says, looking into Frumpkin's green fey eyes. "I was doing fine before him." If he depends on Frumpkin, how much more will it hurt when he's gone? If he learns to look for the ginger-amber cat in every scene he comes across, what happens when that is taken away?

"You were coping without him," Veth corrects, and sighs, "I - Caleb, I'm not the - I don't know the words for what I'm trying to say here. I just... you... listen, do you remember the first day out of hospital?"

He does. Barely.

Caleb and Veth and Caduceus between them had convinced his social worker he could be discharged and seen remotely, which is how the Cara situation had come into being. At the time, he was friends with all the rest of them the way the moon is connected to the stars; they shone, bright, within sight of him, but impossibly far and impossibly bright. Beauregard was the closest, probably, with her continuing, unfailing efforts to know him. To be his friend. The first day out of hospital, Caleb had been helped down the stairs, still using crutches back then, Caduceus's big strong paw on his elbow, and he had seen the bustle of people for the first time in - oh, years.

He woke up in Veth's bathtub with Caduceus laying strips of disinfected cloth over his bare arms, and the sound of Yeza and Veth hotly arguing about how safe he really was. "Don't worry," Caduceus had said in that slow rumble of his, "Don't think about it. You had a bit of a shock."

Now Caleb can walk on his own from home to home. He goes to the shops, Frumpkin at his heels with the green sparkle of the fey around his whiskers preventing anyone from stopping him entering. When he gets lost, Frumpkin finds the way.

"I remember," Caleb says.

Veth smiles, tremulous. "Caleb... it's been such a short time. And you - they told us you'd be like that for _months."_

"So I'm recovering. So I don't need the cat," Caleb says stoutly. "By your - by your own logic."

"So you're recovering _because of_ the cat. By my own logic."

Frumpkin begins to purr, and the rumbling soothes Caleb down, settles him, makes him feel less like he might turn and run away. "I don't need him," his voice breaks, to his own horror.

Veth hugs him, her hand seeking the TV remote. "Your follow-up is on Friday."

"I know."

Frumpkin sits with his weight on Caleb's legs and Caleb loves him.

"Fjord said he'll take you. He's not in training."

Caleb knows that isn't the whole truth; Fjord _is_ in training on Fridays, and so he must have said something to his coach to get him out without much fuss. Caleb also knows that both Fjord and Beauregard have started citing him as a family emergency, and the university and the Cobalt Soul let them go, every time. "Did he say he would come in with me?"

"I think that's why he took - I mean, why he offered," Veth says, grinning sheepishly, knowing what Caleb knows but unwilling to break the pretence. "I love you, you know. Tell them you want to keep the damn cat."

"Yeah. _Ja._ Yes. I - I love you too."

“And will you tell them?”

“I… will see,” Caleb says, and in his mind’s eye his resolve falls like a tower of cards, swiped from above by a careless white-socked paw.

Fjord picks him up and hugs him, on Friday, half an hour before Caleb's appointment. He smells of sweat and a fruit smoothie in equal amounts, and there's a red berry stain on the front of his vest, which Caleb politely ignores. "I missed you," the orc says, "Feels like _ages._ You ready to - oh, shit, wait, I have something for you."

"Oh, yeah?"

Frumpkin, who had been sleeping on Caleb's shoulder, opens both eyes, and cat and wizard both watch Fjord rummage in his kitbag, muttering to himself. "I swear I put - _oh,_ shit, yeah. Here we go."

He pulls out one of his old rowing shirts, Fjord-sized, forest green with the university logo on the front and _Fjord Stone_ printed across the back, a big white _3_ across the fabric. "Beau said you wanted more PJs?"

"Uh... thank you," Caleb picks it up and doesn't smell or hug it. "Two seconds, please," and he leaves Fjord in the kitchen so he can hide in his room, sequester the shirt away for comfort later on.

Frumpkin leaps onto the shirt lying on the bed, and rubs one amber cheek on it, and fey-sparkling cat hairs lie where he's touched. "I will miss you," Caleb tells him, seriously, although less certain than he had been before his conversation with Veth, "But thank you for being my friend."

Frumpkin crawls inside the neck of the shirt and emerges out one sleeve, and then meows. Caleb knows he must be imagining how sad the little fey thing looks. He meows.

"Caleb?" Fjord calls, "Are you okay?"

"Yes!" Caleb shouts back, and then holds out his arm so Frumpkin can climb up it and resume his favourite position around Caleb's neck, "I'm coming, I'm coming."

Fjord smiles at him and then his gaze drifts catward and his smile widens, lips separated by tusks, "Awesome. You ready to go? I figure if it's just you signing off on Frumpkin or whatever we could stop and get a chippy, bring it to Yasha and Beau. I _really_ fancy some chips. Have you eaten today?"

"Breakfast," Caleb says, "Just a banana," brought to him in bed by Frumpkin, the stalk hanging out of his mouth, hitting Caleb in the face with his tail until Caleb was irritated enough to sit up and eat it, "Yeah, I could have - I could have some chips. Maybe some… yes. That would be nice."

"Some fish for the best cat in the world, too," Fjord screws his face up to coo at Frumpkin, "Would you like that? Fish strips for Frumpkin?"

Guilt pools in Caleb's stomach, but he doesn't say anything. Frumpkin meows enthusiastically.

"Cool, man," Fjord shifts his kitbag to his shoulder, and with all the ease in the world reaches out to take Caleb's hand, "Let's get this shit over and done with, then. Fish and chips await."

Fjord has a CD already playing in the car, and Frumpkin entertains them both by bobbing his head to the beat of each song, his paws pedalling first one then the other into Caleb's brown corduroys, his tail tickling Caleb's neck, and Fjord laughs and tells Caleb Frumpkin is, like, the most popular cat in his team right now, and all of them have seen the video of Frumpkin drawing a dick in the air with his tail like, twenty million times. Caleb has to laugh. He loves that video.

Cara's office is just as institutional as he remembers it from a month ago, and Alanna the spellcaster is there with her too, her components lying on the floor, ready to dispel Frumpkin if Caleb says the word, because they would respect his decision, because it is his decision to make. And who would lie about something like this? Who would get rid of Frumpkin, when he is the easiest thing in the world to love? It makes him feel a little bit sick, but he's here now, and he's committed, and when has the world ever let him have anything for this long? Isn't it better to get rid of Frumpkin when he can control it, rather than later when he can't?

Fjord squeezes his hand.

"Hi, Caleb, Fjord," Cara says with a smile, "Long time no word! It looks like he's comfortable with you, anyway, little thing… How have you guys been getting on? What’s his name? Mr Clay told me he was really helping, Caleb."

Frumpkin, wrapped around Caleb's shoulders, stretches long and loud as though he needs to prove how settled he is on Caleb. In Caleb's life. _With_ Caleb. Caleb doesn’t say anything, and lets the silence hang, because he’s not sure he can speak right now, and definite he doesn’t want to.

"Frumpkin's the best," Fjord says, and then turns dark green when both the women look at him, "I mean, speaking as like - like Caleb's, y'know. Frumpkin's pretty great."

"He is," Caleb admits, the truth tugged out of him like blood from a stone, the words slow and hoarse in his mouth, "Frumpkin's pretty great." The soft little paws touch his bare skin and comfort him, the warm fur on his neck, and he can feel how pleased Frumpkin is, the fey anxiety easing a little bit, "He - yes."

"So," Cara gestures for them to sit, and Frumpkin moves to his customary seat holding Caleb down, "A successful experiment, then?"

Caleb looks at Frumpkin, really _looks_ at him, at the intelligence in his fey-green eyes. He’s only pretending to be a cat, he’s a minor _fey_ in whatever shape he’s summoned in, but that means he’s smarter than cats really are, and that means he knows more than most cats do what he wants. He sees Frumpkin. He - 

“Yes,” Caleb says. He buries his hands in Frumpkin’s soft, warm, comforting fur. “He’s been helpful. He’s… helped a lot, actually.”

And Frumpkin’s purr can be heard all throughout the room. 

“All you have to do is sign a few forms, and we’ll transfer the bond from the Feywild to you,” Cara says softly, and the spellcaster behind her begins fussing with her components pouch, and Caleb picks up the pen and his hands are shaking and there’s still time to change it - 

Fjord puts his hand on Caleb’s waist. “I’m proud of you,” he whispers, and Frumpkin is still purring loud enough for ten cats, and Caleb signs his name. 

And Frumpkin is his. 

**Author's Note:**

> edit for my own future self's sake: this is set 2 months after caleb's parting from ikithon, 1 month after his release from hospital. the only member of the nein he knew previously was veth, but due to his deep trust in her, and her insistence during his hospital stay on members of the nein (which doesnt exist formally in this verse lmao) he learned to befriend and trust them to some extent - beau, caduceus, and fjord more than jester and yasha, who he hasn't met so much due to jester's need to be with marion quite often, and yasha's social anxiety. 
> 
> hope you enjoyed! my tumblr is softlyblues and my twitter is sweetlyblue. leave a comment/kudo if you liked it <3


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